


Beneath His Skin (Blood and Flames)

by klixxy



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Angst, Blood and Injury, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Death, Depression, Dreams and Nightmares, Flame Alchemy, Heavy Angst, Hurt, Like, Military, Minor Character Death, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Roy needs a hug, The Author Regrets Everything, The Author Regrets Nothing, War, really - Freeform, really needs a hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-13
Updated: 2020-02-13
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:07:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22693777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/klixxy/pseuds/klixxy
Summary: “You killed me.” She says again, quietly, without a hint of anger in her voice. She states the fact as if she is talking about nothing but the weather. Her smile is a small, crumbling thing, more of a show of remorse than a sign of joy.“I know.” He whispers, and he can barely hear himself over thebombs and theguns and thefire that roars from his fingertipsas hesnaps.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 32





	Beneath His Skin (Blood and Flames)

**Author's Note:**

> WARNING: THE FOLLOWING CONTENT CONTAINS BLOOD, VIOLENCE, AND A HIGHLY DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF WAR AND DEATH ALONG WITH PTSD. PLEASE READ WITH THIS IS MIND.
> 
> poor Roy.... I've been watching fma again and god... every time I watch it man... it just gets better and better I swear...

The heat stings against Roy’s skin. Blood splatters across his cheeks, his skin is dyed a honey orange, and he’s sure his eyes dance with the flames reflected in their inky black pools. The earth around him explodes, debris falling around him like a twisted, darker version of rain. Bodies litter the floor. Voices overlap; two different languages, bellowed orders and desperate, pain-wracked screaming. 

It doesn’t matter.

He’s been here more time than he can count.

The scent of ash in the air, slightly tangy and bitter. Sweet. Disgustingly sweet. Sweet in a way that makes him want to fall to his knees on the rocky floor and retch weakly upon the knowledge that swims in his mind. The squelching liquid, wet and uncomfortable at the soles of his thick and worn military boots and the overwhelming hints of iron that wafts up every time that he dares move. The dull, ringing pain that thuds against his ribs, his arms, the rough, itchy feeling of the torn blue fabric upon his shoulders. The cough of the guns from all around him, the pleas of the people on the other end falling on deaf ears because the entire world is muffled, feels oddly thick- or perhaps that's just the ash, dripping from the sky, scattering over the burnt bones, over the blood of the-

Innocent. 

The sight around him, engraved into his memory like a sculpture that he cannot ever break, no matter how many times he swings at it with a sledge-hammer- the smoke in the air, so thick that he can barely see through it, the corpses of the dead lying all across the floor like some particularly bloody fairytale, the muzzles of guns jolting in the corners of his eyes behind a thick barricade and lodging in a burst of metallic blood in the backs of the terrified people _(innocent, innocent people, children, mothers, grandfathers, teenagers-)_ racing away on unsteady feet in vain. The horrifying thump that they make as they fall like birds to a stone, not getting up, no matter how many seconds or minutes pass or how badly the others desperately try to pull them along- never to get up again.

A sight he has seen much too many times in his lifetime.

All around him, the familiar blue uniforms of his fellow soldiers fight and fight and fight, the sparks of alchemy roaring throughout the entire battlefield- explosions and earthquakes and spikes and ice and _fire-_. People fall like puppet toys with their strings cut their eyes open and haunted and haunt _ing._

An explosion jars his feet, and someone behind him, a Lieutenant, yells something into the heavy, smoke-filled air, but Roy is finding it harder and harder to breathe through the black that fills his vision, the harsh odor of blood that stings against his nostrils. A gunshot pierces through the pile of bodies and death and flames, passing by in a blur of bronze-gold dangerously close to his chest.

And yet, Roy does not move.

What does it matter?

He’s not truly here anyways.

He comes here every night, in his dreams, feels the heat against his cheeks, the fire bursting forwards at the snap of his fingers to destroy homes, people, stories, _lives._

He always comes back and back _and back_ , reliving the worst times of his life.

The smoke clears, and there is a little girl, who couldn’t be older than nine, standing on the shattered rock before him, blood running down her brown-skinned cheek, her short white hair stained brown and black and red. Her clothes are no more than tatters of black ashes. Her red eyes glimmer in the echoing darkness of the battlefield. In her hands, she holds a book of prayers. She looks up at him, and her eyes are tired, tired, and her face crinkles like a ripped sheet of paper, her lips cracked like a shattered piece of glass.

“You killed me.” She says, and it’s the first sentence that sounds clearly through the deafening, endless screaming.

And Roy, Roy feels oddly detached from the world. He is still in his own body, staring down at this little girl, but he isn’t here, isn’t quite in rhythm with the rest of the world, isn’t quite sure who he is, where he is, and why he is here. He is a faint, faint reflection of himself, lost within the orders and the screaming and the gunshots and the _fire._

But still, at those words, his face crumples like a sheet of paper under his fist. 

Somewhere far, far, away, Roy is still aware that this is a dream, that this has already happened, that he needs to move on. Somewhere far, far, away, Roy Mustang is still aware of who he is, what he must do, what he must be. Somewhere far, far, away, Roy is still gluing his cracks together, still holding onto a semblance of sanity.

But _this_ Roy Mustang is standing here, on a bloody battlefield, right in front of an Ishvalan _child._

A girl with parents and brothers and sisters and friends and a future and a whole life still ahead of her, and his arms lifts up, and he is staring at his own, bloody, gloved hand as it’s thumb comes to a rest against its middle finger, aimed straight at the girl’s face.

The girl’s eyes burn with a dead kind of sorrow, a defeated look of acceptance or perhaps ignorance. Her hands clutch tighter around the book of prayers as if it could help her, as if God could come down, right at this moment and lower Roy’s hands, protect this innocent little girl from the horrors of war.

“You killed me.” She says again, quietly, without a hint of anger in her voice. She states the fact as if she is talking about nothing but the weather. Her smile is a small, crumbling thing, more of a show of remorse than a sign of joy.

“I know.” He whispers, and he can barely hear himself, over the bombs and the guns and the fire that roars from his fingertips as he snaps, eating away at everything in its path with a hunger that might have frightened him, all those years and years ago. And he is still frightened. But now, he just cannot bring himself to care.

The girl falls to her knees and screams tear from his throat as she claws at the fire that burns through her skin and she writhes on the ground, her eyes wild and desperate as she chokes upon the heat and the ashes and the pain. Her books falls to the ground, aflame. 

Her prayers alight on fire.

How ironic.

And Roy, Roy chokes on the smell of burnt flesh that washes over him, pulling him under and holding him under the surface. He cannot breathe, he cannot breathe, he cannot breathe, and perhaps at one point he would have cried and screamed and wailed to the world, but he has been the murderer of his girl for years and years and years on end every night when the moon touched the shadows of the night and he laid his head down upon his pillow, watching the darkness drift over the world until his eyes closed and brought him here, to this battlefield, and this girl, and he can no longer feel the wetness in his eyes. All he can feel, is a deep, breaking emptiness that hollows out in his chest.

He is empty, empty, empty, and all he can see is the burnt, blackened body of the child, limbs askew and beautiful white hair now a sooty, ugly black, her face wrenched open in an expression of inexplicable pain, forced to forever sit upon this place that stinks rotten of death until the wind and the rain and the world wears down at her bones and turns it to ash, and then she will be scattered, with the rest of her people, in a legacy that will only be remembered through horror stories and blood and pain and _war._

Roy is so, so, _tired._

A bang echoes from nowhere and yet everywhere, and a bullet lodges deep in his chest. Roy Mustang falls without a sound in the battlefield, just another dead body within a sea of thousands.

...

When he wakes, he can still feel the flames at his fingertips, the acid, poison pain scorching at his chest as the blood soaks his uniform, the smell of the war- the ash, the blood, the death, the scent of burnt flesh.

He stares down at his hands.

Hands of a murderer.

Scars overlap each other, twisting and curling across the white expanse of his skin, gnarly and ugly as they map around each other like a maze. His gloves lie on the countertop beside him, gleaming like a gun in the dark. His uniform is thrown half-hazardly over a chair by his desk. 

Little things.

Things that he knows he will keep with him, that will haunt him for the rest of his life, weighing upon his steps and his shoulders like a cape of guilt and regret. A deep, gouging emptiness that follows him through the halls, the streets, even in the rooms of his very own house.

And yet…

And yet…

And yet Roy Mustang forces himself up every morning. He brushes his teeth and washes his hair and shaves his chin. He meticulously buttons all of the buttons on that blue army uniform, pulls his gloves on, and pulls on the heavy military boots that lie discarded in the hall. He marches to Central and sits at his desk and fights his way through another day.

And he does it for...

Perhaps he does it for the heavy guilt that broils in his stomach like a thousand snakes. 

Perhaps, out of a twisted sense of justice. 

Perhaps, to fix all of his and his country’s mistakes. 

Perhaps, just simply for the miniskirts, like he insists.

But over all things, Roy Mustang is a good man.

And the true reason he gets up every morning where many, many others may not, is not for his own sake, or even the sake of responsibility.

He does it for a father, earning money for his wife and children, for a brother, who loves and supports his siblings, for a child, who wants nothing more than a hug from her mother every morning.

He does it for the mourning, who leave little pieces of themselves behind in the flowers that they leave on a cold gravestone, for the living, the heave themselves through another day, for the dead, that wish nothing more than for the rest of them to continue smiling, laughing, crying, yelling, _living._

He does it, for those who have lost it all, and those who have lost nothing.

He does it, for the soldiers who fight at his side.

He does it, for those who cannot.

Because beneath everything, Roy Mustang is a man who loves before anything else.


End file.
